End-of-Year Book Freakout Tag 2018! (fave characters and other bookish madness)

Dec31

I’m stealing this from the ever-fabulous Sarah @ Dreams and Dragons, and I’m tweaking some of the questions from “in the second half of the year” to just the year in general, given that I didn’t do one of these for the first half. XD

(Also, I was going to link to the books, but given how many of them I reference in this post, that sounds exhausting. So I will point you in the direction of this list of things I read in 2018, where you can find most of the books. And if I do links to books in the post, it will be to reviews I wrote. :))

1. Best book you’ve read in 2018

I will be doing a top 15 reads of 2018 post soon! (Once I put together my reading lists and make difficult life decisions like what I loved most. Being a bookworm is haaard.)

But off the top of my head I’m going to say . . . Echo North (which I JUST finished!) and The Electrical Menagerie and Lady Moon. ALL SO GOOD. ❤ ❤ ❤ There will be others in my upcoming post!

2. Best sequel you’ve read in 2018

Minstrel’s Call, Sage, and Song of Leira. I HAVE SO MANY FEELS. I LOVE THEM ALL. They were all actually CONCLUSIONS to series and absoluly blew me away and just… my heart! ❤

3. New release you haven’t read yet but want to

So many! But I think I’ll go with the first Green Princess book which I STILL haven’t read. And Rothana (because Halayda was amazing) and I’m sooo excited to get my copy in the mail sometime. 😀 *curls up on mailbox in the form of a small dragon and waits*

4. Most anticipated release for next year

I have a few, but Flight of the Raven is up there on the list!

Also The Mountain Baron because I beta-read it and it’s awesome!

5. Biggest disappointment

Maybe Fawkes? It just wasn’t my favorite and now I feel bad and have no idea how to review it but it’s a review book and this is all really awkward… (Or should I say fawkward?)

6. Biggest surprise

Hmm. I don’t know if there were any huge surprises? I guess I’ll just go with how surprised I was at how much I adored the first Ranger’s Apprentice, which I talked all about here.

7. Favorite new-to-you author

So many, but I’ll pick three: W.R. Gingell, Mollie E. Reeder, and Joanna Ruth Meyer! I’m going to read all of their things. ❤ (People, go add Masque, The Electrical Menagerie, and Echo North to your TBR right now.)

8. Newest fictional crush/ship

Let’s go with ships, shall we? *cough*

SO MANY. In no particular order:

  • Malcolm and Melody (The Return of Beaumont and Beasley)
  • SPOILERS from Sage
  • Kate and Patrick from the Kate’s Case Files books (I read Kate’s Dilemma and Kate’s Conundrum this year)
  • Gan and Chouko (Blood in the Snow)
  • Tomas and Celine (Lady Moon)
  • Damien and Selena (Mark of the Raven)
  • Isabella and Lord Pecus (Masque)
  • Hal and Echo (Echo North)

9. Newest favorite character(s)

DO YOU WANT TO BE HERE ALL DAY? *cough* For a start:

  • Jayden and Dana (various short stories by Arthur Daigle! I NEED these to be a novel so I can share about them to EVERYONE. BECAUSE THEY’RE MY FAVORITE THING.)
  • Halt (Ranger’s Apprentice)
  • Tomas (Lady Moon)
  • The Horse Lords (Masque)
  • Todd Crane (Horseman)
  • Carthage and Huxley and Dominic (The Electrical Menagerie)
  • Damien (Mark of the Raven)
  • Chayse (Falling Snow)
  • and last but far from least, Hal (Echo North)

And characters who aren’t exactly NEW, since I’ve met them before, but I want to include anyway:

I HAVE A LOT OF FAVORITE CHARACTERS, OKAY. ❤

10. A book that made you cry

Song of Leira! You KNOW what part it was if you’ve read it. My feeeeels.

11. A book that made you happy

Oh, so many! But since I’ve already mentioned some in my “favorites” I’ll avoid repeating myself, and I’ll say Common. It just . . . made me happy. ^_^

12. Favorite book to film adaptation you’ve seen this year

I suddenly can’t remember the movies I watched this year. XD I did just see Mortal Engines at the theater and thought it was LOADS OF FUN (go see it) but I haven’t read the book . . . *shame*

I was just watching some episodes of The Return of Sherlock Holmes featuring Jeremy Brett, who I hadn’t watched before, and a couple of those were good adaptions.

We’ll go with those two because they were this month and who even remembers the rest of the year? 😛 (Hint: Not me.)

13. Favorite post(s) you’ve done this year

These are just a few, for this blog… I haven’t checked my other blog for favorites yet. XD

14. Most beautiful book you’ve bought/received this year

Oh, man. I feel like there have been so many gorgeous ones! For now I think I’ll go with two I got for Christmas: Blood in the Snow and The Fall of Gondolin (with epic illustrations!!).

15. Any other books you want to babble about for any other reason?

Ohhh, yes. *rubs hands gleefully together* How about a random collection of books that I enjoyed for various reasons (some of which are different than my usual genres so might not make it to my top-books post but we’ll see). And some re-reads and beta-reads.

  • Scoundrels was a super-fun sci-fi heist featuring Han Solo (set between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back), and it’s by Timothy Zahn so I knew I’d like it, but it was just totally awesome! (They should have made it a movie instead of Solo. XD)
  • Dear Mr. Knightley is a contemporary and I had no idea I’d like it as much as I did because it’s totally not my thing, but I loved it.
  • Trial by Song was a modern scary-fairy Jack and the Beanstalk retelling with a smidge of Snow White set in winter and was SO INTENSE. O_O
  • Healers and Warriors was an awesome continuation of a modern fantasy series that makes me happy, and I loved the twists and characters and… I gotta say, the villain was so creepy and well-written!
  • The False Prince and The Stealthmaster’s Shadow had really snarky main characters who told the stories, which gave me life!
  • Lightporter and RotoVegas are both really fun YA superhero novels, and just… can we talk about how it’s cool that this is a thing?

I also re-read all the Beaumont and Beasley books that came out last year (because I’m now the Editor of the Afterverse), which was LOADS of fun. (The Return of Beaumont and Beasle and Horseman came out this year, so those were new reads.)

I re-read the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones, which was a highlight because I’ve been meaning to do that for ages, and The Crown of Dalemark is still one of my top fave DWJ books.

I beta-read three INCREDIBLE books which have yet to be published:

  • The Road to Bremen by Kelsey Bryant (releasing in January! I can’t wait to see the cover and illustrations!)
  • The Brightest Thread by Tracey Dyck (which I hope will be published someday sooon because it was a stellar Sleeping Beauty novel featuring dreams and Prince Hadrian who is My Fave)
  • The Mountain Baron by C. M. Banschbach (releasing summer 2019 and featuring Rhys, my smol floof of anger management issues, and lots of clannishness and outlaws and feels).

I just had to give a shout-out about these!

Okay! I will stop babbling before I end up talking about every book I read this year. XD

What’s your favorite book you read in 2018? Did you have a good reading year? (Mine was fabulous!) And do you have any bookish resolutions for 2019?

Thanks for reading!

Stay tuned for more bookish posts in the new year. 🙂

Happy New Year, my pagelings!

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35 thoughts on “End-of-Year Book Freakout Tag 2018! (fave characters and other bookish madness)”

  2. So many epic books and lovely covers!

    And… AWWWK you mentioned Minstrel’s Call and Brant and Kiernan…. *does a happy dance* I’m so glad you enjoyed that. Eeeee!

    I say we kidnap Tracey and keep her locked in a closet with her computer until she finishes all the last little bits of The Brightest Thread and gets it published so we can shout about it and shove it at people and demand they read it immediately. (I see nothing wrong with this plan… if it works, we can use it on other authors we wish would hurry up and get their next book out).

    Okay… maybe that’s a bit drastic.

    Ahem.

    I had a GREAT reading year … and I’ve already written my top 15 books post (you picked 15, too??!?! I tried really hard to keep it to ten, but I just couldn’t), but this tag looks fun.

    My current 2019 resolution is to break a land-speed… er… reading-speed record with how fast I can read So Sang the Dawn in January. *cracks knuckles* Finally, a competition I have a shot at winning. LOL

    I also want to read all the book-club books I’m behind on… and try to keep up with the picks for 2019… that… probably won’t happen… but maybe I can read more than 6 of the books this year.

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    • Yes indeed!

      And of course I had to! I love themmmm! ^_^

      I’m totally in on this plan to get TBT published. (Except if it does work, it might set a precedent for y’all to do this to ME and I’m not sure how I’d like that. O_O Awk!)

      I’m so glad you had a great reading year too!! And yes, I picked 15 — I usually do. It seems like any time I try to make these lists I have 11-14 or more sooo I decide to just… do that. XD That’s perfect! I shall look forward to seeing yours! 🙂

      Ooh, good luck on reading that in January! I’ve heard it’s huge! XD You’ve got this! (I’m actually super happy that the FoF book of the month for January is a novella. :P)

      I’m kiiind of resigned to the fact I probably won’t catch up on past bookclub reads in general but I’d still like to try if I can… Keeping up with bookclubs this year is also one of mine! And 6 is awesome! I only got 7 in, and a couple of those I had read before-hand anyway. XD

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  3. What a great idea turning this into an end of the year tag! I looooved reading about all the bookish goodness you experienced this year! 😀 It was a good year of books.

    Yesssss to Lady Moon and Tomas and just everything about that story. IT WAS SO PRECIOUS! ❤ And of course the Beaumont and Beasley and Crockett and Crane crew. MY PEOPLE! <333

    My goodness, soooo many of these are on my TBR. Like The Electrical Menagerie (that'll probably be one of my first 2019 reads!) and Common. And I apparently need this Echo North book because it sounds awesome. o.o And Dear Mr. Knightley! I've only ever heard good things about that story from so many people, and I found a copy just here recently! 😀 Though…I'd like to read Jane Austen's actual Emma before reading any retellings of things of it. Heh.

    AND ALL THE YES TO THE BRIGHTEST THREAD. HADRIAN. <3333

    It looks like you read so many fantastic books this year! This tag was awesome. Thank you for sharing! I do hope 2019 will be the best year of reading yet!

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    • I thought it was such a fun idea so I had to steal it! 😀 And thank you! It WAS a good year of books!

      TOMAS AND LADY MOON AND B&B AND C&C YESSS! 😀

      The Electrical Menageriiiiiie! You totally need Echo North. It’s awesome. *dies*

      Oh, and a quick warning about Dear Mr. Knightley! I thought it was an Emma retelling too because of the title but it’s noooot. There are loads of references to classic literature including Austen, and one of the main characters is called “Mr. Knightley” but it’s not an Emma retelling. I think it’s a retelling of something else called Daddy Long-Legs which I’m not familiar with? ANYWAY. Thought you should know so you’re not disappointed. XD (But you should read Emma because it’s awesome! You just don’t have to read it before reading this one. ;))

      HADRIAN.

      Thank you so much! I hope your reading of 2019 is amazing as well! ❤

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  4. I’m glad you did this tag! I loved seeing your answers! So many books — both that I love and that I need to read. (I’m excited for Rothana as well; I got a review copy and I still need to read it.)

    As far as Fawkes goes: just be honest. Say what you liked and what you didn’t like and leave it at that. Just because someone gave you a free book doesn’t mean you have to love it. And, honestly, having a not-all-positive review can be helpful. I know that, as a reader, I get suspicious of books that have ONLY positive reviews. I like when there are some less enthused ones so I know what I might not like.

    I find it very interesting that Gan and Chouko are on your list of favorite new ships.

    Liked by 1 person

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    • Yay! I’m glad you enjoyed — thanks for doing it in the first place and giving me the idea to do it, because it was fun! (Rothanaaaa! I specifically avoided getting a review copy because I was swamped. XD)

      Thanks so much for your thoughts and advice! I so appreciate that. 🙂 And it’s true that some less-enthused ones can help readers…

      Haha, I was looking at my favorite books of the year looking for ships and I was like OH. GAN AND CHOUKO. XD I mean, they could’ve gone in favorite characters but for some reason I wanted them there. Why is it interesting? *guilty look*

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  8. Pingback: Top 15 Favorite Reads of 2018! | The Page Dreamer

  9. Pingback: Book Ishness + 200 Posts! (June 2019) | The Page Dreamer

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